Commentary: Silence, Satire and the Weight of Memory

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

A recent social media post circulated by figures associated with the Trump administration depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes has drawn widespread condemnation, reopening long-standing wounds about race, power and accountability in American public discourse.

I ‘ve heard some in the White community attempt to dismiss the video as satire.
Satire, by definition, critiques broadly and evenly. When it is selectively applied, it ceases to be comedy and becomes commentary. In the video, several political figures are portrayed as animals. However, only the Obamas are depicted through imagery that echoes a centuries-old racist trope historically used to dehumanize Black people. That distinction is not incidental. When everyone is rendered an animal, but only one group is reduced to a specific historical insult, the message is neither neutral nor accidental. It is targeted.

Defenders may attempt to dismiss the post as parody or provocation. But intent is revealed not by disclaimers, but by patterns. Context matters. History matters. And imagery matters—especially when it has been used repeatedly to justify exclusion, violence and inequality.

And then there are those, once again in the White community, who ask the question of Black people; Why are you so mad?” The question ignores the very conditions that give rise to the response. One cannot mock a history they never had to survive and then police the emotions of those who did. Trauma does not expire on a convenient timetable.

The memory of slave ships, Jim Crow laws, broken promises such as 40 acres and a mule, and the economic head start built over generations is not abstract or distant. It is a lived inheritance, passed down through policy, practice and experience. For those still living with its aftershocks, history is not old—it is ongoing.

No one gets to decide when trauma expires for communities still bearing its consequences. Silence in moments like these is not neutrality; it is complicity. And remembrance, especially in the face of minimization or mockery, is not rage.

It is reality.